More than 122 million lives saved. Hundreds of millions people lifted out of extreme poverty. Over the course of its existence, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has helped drive massive positive outcomes like that by focusing on what it calls “actionable measurement” – aka a commitment to collecting and analyzing data about its activities and interventions, and then…
The best way to combat global poverty at scale is to put money directly into the hands of millions of people who have very little of it. That’s the simple, powerful vision that Segovia CEO Michael Faye and his co-founder Paul Niehaus pitched me in 2015, and the reason I was excited to lead their Series A round with a personal…
A series of articles in the New York Times describes an alleged operation to spread misinformation during the 2017 Alabama Senate race. Because I’m referenced in these articles, I want to address them. The most disturbing aspect of this coverage is its description of how fake Twitter accounts with Russian-sounding names were created to follow Roy Moore, in…
Each new communications medium — writing, newspapers, radio, television — has both created essential progress and posed new and potentially harmful challenges to society. The fundamental lesson we need to learn from our history is not that we should halt or reverse innovation, but rather that we need to evolve new technology and its interface…
One goal I have for 2018 and beyond is to increase my participation in ongoing efforts to make tech workplaces more diverse and inclusive. It’s an urgent and critical problem; one only has to read Emily Chang’s latest book, Brotopia, to get a deeper understanding what has unfortunately become the experience of so many women in tech.…
Collusion. Corruption. Covfefe. In 2017, it was easy to get distracted — and distraught — by President Trump’s Category 5 tweetstorms and the news cycles they drove. And thanks to the connectedness we now experience through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we often feel every newsworthy event with both apocalyptic urgency and a sense of fatigue that can paralyze us…
In April 2015, a mother in Flint, Michigan concerned about the city’s seemingly tainted water supply contacted Marc Edwards, an engineering professor who had previously helped expose a similar issue in Washington DC. While the initial tests Edwards made on samples the woman provided revealed high levels of lead in Flint’s water, local officials and…
Entrepreneurship for the Sustainable Development Goals My keynote remarks at the UN General Assembly’s High-Level Event on Innovation and Technology – SDG Innovation. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Excellencies: Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here with you today. My name is Reid Hoffman. I’m the founder of LinkedIn and a partner at the…
Every year in the U.S., individuals, foundations, and corporations donate around $47 billion a year to non-profit organizations that focus on child welfare, food security, homelessness, and other areas that fall under the domain of “human services.” In comparison, federal, state, and local government spend around $411 billion a year providing similar safety-net services. In his recent book The Givers:…
As technology entrepreneur and former State Department senior advisor Alec Ross suggests in his New York Times best-seller, The Industries of the Future, prosperity goes to societies “that don’t just double down on the past but that can adapt and direct their citizens toward industries that are growing.” As an entrepreneur and investor, I’ve always focused on the future,…
We live in an era of massive public marches and standing-room-only town hall meetings. People today expect opportunities to actively engage with the legislators who govern them and the companies they do business with. Change.org, the global hub for collective action, is a crucial democratizing force in this era of growing civic participation. It helps…
In Silicon Valley, the biggest financial rewards go to innovative, often contrarian ideas that scale globally. So entrepreneurs don’t just look for opportunities to create something radically new. They also look for opportunities that can impact hundreds of millions of people. This mindset has brought us Google, Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, smartphones, and countless other…
Progress comes from innovation, and innovation happens when inventors, entrepreneurs, activists, organizers, and others refuse to accept the status quo. Instead, they pursue new paths and new solutions – and sometimes bend or even break the rules in the process. This dynamic is what inspires the MIT Media Lab’s Disobedience Award.Announced in July 2016 at the…
Over the holidays, I had a chance to reflect on 2016 and everything that occurred during it. Obviously, this included major geopolitical events like the U.S. election and Brexit. But I also spent some time reflecting on events taking place closer to home, including an unfortunate situation involving one of the country’s most important institutions…
How the Affordable Care Act Encourages Entrepreneurship While broad access to healthcare is a cornerstone of social justice, some critics have characterized the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a form of socialism. Others emphasize the regulatory burden it places on small businesses, which under its terms must offer healthcare plans if they have 50 or…